Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Church Frontier

We've all heard the American West being described as the frontier during the time when cowboys and Indians lived not so peacefully together in the Old West, or perhaps we know the Last Frontier of Star Trek. In each case, frontier described not only a lawless, disorganized place, but it also described a journey of settlement and discovery. The Christian Church also had a frontier phase in its very early history because it was spread out across the Roman Empire, accepted by people of many ethnic cultures, and was full of turmoil as it developed its doctrine.

The furthest thing that I wanted to convey in the last post was that this early Church was without its problems. Indeed, the books of the New Testament, withstanding the Gospels and Revelations, are admonitions from Paul to the churches he founded on his missions, as well as other churches that other Apostles had founded prior to their executions under Roman rule. Being that the only people who actually knew Christ's teachings were those who were with Him during His life, and the fact that the Bible wasn't published yet in its entirety, there was little to guide these infant congregations after the missionaries left, and they were sure to stray at least a little bit from the teachings of the Apostles and Paul as time passed.

I really cannot go into my rhetorical point about Truth as it relates to doctrine and the Bible until I give you a little history of the church itself from 80 AD - 350 AD. It was this period of time that the Church began to develop into what I call the true Catholic Church, and it was during this period of time that Saint Jerome became inspired to create a completed Bible that was accepted as an accurate translation.

The issue was due to geography. At this time, there were several church districts that were recognized as being powerful, and, by powerful, I mean being respected as "centers" of Christianity where a Bishop ruled, and where doctrines were created, deciphered, and expounded upon. During this time, most of the churches were located in Jerusalem, North Africa, Greece, and Rome. Rome, at this point, was not considered a major province or district. Most of the church leaders were Greek, as a matter of fact, because most of the early missions were in Greek regions, although under Roman rule. In fact, aside from Rome, the only church that used Latin as its official language was the church in Alexandria, Egypt. The North Africans adopted Latin because they were adopting the language of their rulers, the Romans. And besides North Africa and parts of Italy, everyone else leading the Church possessed Greek names.

Therefore, we had a split in the Church between the East and the West. The West composed the North African and Italian churches, the East composed the Greek and Asian churches. Politics were very predominant within the churches during this period because of the issues with the Roman Empire. Remember, the Roman Empire split into the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire, and the Eastern Empire built Constantinople as its imperial city (now Istanbul in Turkey). This political issue further complicated the church because both emperors (brothers) were Christians, and they each wanted to have a say in the affairs of the state-religion they chose.

Throughout this time, the early Church Fathers were dealing with theological questions arising from mission churches, as well as the political ramifications during the split of the empire. In fact, the term "Holy Roman Empire" was created when the Western Empire finally took its place as the Catholic leader with the Holy See located in Rome while the Eastern Church, led from Constantinople, became the Orthodox Church -- similar to the modern Catholic Church but very different in many regards, especially the Liturgy.

So, throughout this time, there were two main groups of people -- those who supported the Eastern Church and those who supported the Western Church. In the early stages of this split, the Eastern Church was victorious in winning more "theological disputes" for two reasons: the Greeks still felt intellectually superior to the "vulgar" Romans, so they assumed that their writers and scholars were more intelligent and more correct on issues of theology, and, secondly, the Eastern Church was more organized and had more support from the Eastern Roman Empire. The Western Church, on the other hand, was battling the fact that it was spread from Africa to Rome, and it had yet to produce a remarkable theologian. As well, it did not have a Bible to call its own as most of the texts were in Greek.

This brings us to the Bible. In order for the Catholic Church to grow and survive, it needed a Bible. At this time, the original documents, letters, songs, and books of the Bible were in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. These original documents were right from the hands of the writers who were inspired by God when they wrote. The Western Church needed a Latin Bible, but no scholar had been able to get the original writings to translate them, nor did any Latin scholar have the ability to do so. It was noted that the church in Alexandria had a Bible that was translated into Latin (really, only the Psalms and the Gospels), but this translation was full of errors and was written in a very rough Latin which the people of Rome could barely understand. This is common when a language is a second-language, so there were many Latin/African colloquialisms which prevented it from becoming a Bible the Western Church could use everywhere -- and it was full of errors, omissions, and incorrect translations. No copy of this Bible exists anymore, but it did during Jerome's time.

What is even more important to the development of Christianity is the fact that the Western Church was intent on being the "orthodox" Church. In other words, it was the more conservative of the two branches of the Church (paradoxical considering the fact that the Eastern Church finally called itself the Orthodox Church). The Western Church rejected political appointments of Bishops, they rejected Arianism, which I discussed during the last post, and they were holding their ground on the basic issues of the Christian faith. Issues such as the Holy Trinity, Christ being God-incarnate, and Communion (Transubstantiation -- the bread and wine actually become the blood and flesh of Christ rather than a symbolic gesture) were a few of many questions being dealt with at the time. The Eastern Church succumbed to much political intervention, and they had many prominent leaders who believed in Arianism, but because they had the language and culture that the West didn't, they were stronger, and their Councils were more powerful than the Western Councils. For the Christian Church to survive as Christ and the Apostles preached, the Western Church would have to succeed at becoming the stronger of the two, and for this to happen, it needed its own Bible that was true to God's voice.

This is where Saint Jerome falls into the picture. By 382 AD, Jerome had gone from an obscure monk living an ascetic life in the deserts of Syria to a recognized scholar. Like I said, Jerome was an educated young man who grew up with the best that Roman culture and learning could provide. He gave it all up to devote himself to the secluded environment of the desert where he fasted, prayed, and studied. While in the Syrian desert, he also learned Hebrew from a Jewish convert who lived near him outside of Antioch in the wilderness. Although Jerome had written several books during this seclusion, he was not known in the Church beyond Antioch, but he did have a friend who was the Bishop of Antioch, and at the request of his friend, he went to Rome to record the proceedings of the Roman Council which was an attempt to counter the Council of Constantinople (these Councils were scholarly attempts to define doctrine by the Bishops and theologians). Jerome was so well-regarded during his time in Rome, that the Bishop of Rome, Demasus, asked him to remain in Rome as his secretary. Contrary to his desired lifestyle of monastic seclusion, Jerome accepted, and he also became a priest during this period, even though he preferred being a monk. The priesthood, however, gave him more authority as a scholar, and it eventually gave him the ability to become a leader in the Church.

Demasus is considered to have been the first Roman Bishop who actually made good changes for the Church in Rome, and he was beginning to solve the problems of the Church that kept it from being a leader of doctrine. Although Rome was not a powerful Church at this time, it was growing in strength because of his work. In Jerome, he found a true scholar, and he felt God's presence in Jerome. He also felt that God had led Jerome to him for a reason, and that reason was to give the church a Bible. Because Jerome was the only theologian in the Western Church who had a knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and because he knew theology so well and had a deep spiritual life, Damasus felt God's hand when he encouraged Jerome to give the Western Church a Bible.

Jerome understood the complexity and importance of this task, and he knew that if he were going to convey God's message, he would have to do it from the original documents. For example, there were two Old Testaments: the Greek Septuagint and the original Hebrew. The Septuagint was written by Jewish scholars and translated from Hebrew to Greek 200-300 years before Christ, but Jerome considered it full of errors and contradictions. In addition, the texts of Bibles existing during Jerome's time were full of the same. He found everything available to be full of mistakes "by false transcription, by clumsy corrections and by careless interpolations," and the only way to avoid further confusion was to go back to the original source.

What Jerome undertook was a rhetorical necessity. If God's words were being translated incorrectly, then God's message was being delivered incorrectly. And he believed that many of the schisms within the Church was due to misinterpretations of the Bible.

He was absolutely correct. In fact, during this time, there was one significant issue between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, and the issue is chief to the core concept of Christianity, and it all revolved around the translation of two words: ousia and hypostasis. These were Greek words, and when translated to Latin, they could mean two separate things regarding the nature of God and the Holy Trinity. The Arians used a "modern" Greek interpretation of the words, and that meant that the Apostles were stating that Christ was not God-incarnate, but just a good man who walked the earth. Jerome went back to the original Greek that the Apostles wrote in, and deciphered their statements as Christ being God in flesh.

It was controversies like this, based upon language and the changing nature of language, that was so problematic for the Church, and it was given to Jerome, by God, to ensure that a Holy Bible, available to all, would speak God's word without flaw. Damasus was not mistaken about his perception of God's purpose for Jerome. Noted 19th Century Theological Professor James Westcott, says of Jerome: "This great scholar, probably alone for 1,500 years, possessed the qualifications necessary for producing an original version of the scriptures for the use of the Latin churches." And because of the political upheavals of the Middle Ages, without Jerome's answer to God's call, the Christian Church would have fallen apart. The Eastern Church eventually fell apart over time due to its inherent weaknesses and attacks from Muslim countries; therefore, the conservative Western Church was the key to Christianity's survival.

This is a very brief discussion of a long and detailed history of the early Church. I have skipped many issues and have briefly covered others. My point, however, is two-fold: a Bible for the people was needed in order to build the Church, and, secondly, rhetorically speaking, the translation of that Bible was important in relaying the Word of God.

This all being said, in my next post, I want to start looking at the issue that I am concerned with from a rhetorical point of view as the Church progressed, faltered, and then changed over time. When I profess that I belong to the Original Catholic Church, that profession is made regarding the Church, once seated in Rome when it became the Holy See, and the Church that based its beliefs off of the Bible that Jerome translated and put together. Those doctrines, those beliefs, and those proclamations are what I believe in. They are not necessarily the same as the Catholic Church today, especially post-Vatican II (another Council from the 20th Century), but not that far apart either. As a result, I still feel comfortable celebrating Mass in my church, but I don't agree with everything I hear from the catechism being taught, and I have proof of the errors that exist -- proof from a theological perspective as well as a rhetorical perspective, and that is what I will be discussing.

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